Driving customer centricity in retail banking

In a new blog post, Chad Hamblin global industry director for Microsoft Dynamics in financial services, outlined a number of innovative ways that banking organisations are modernising their operations. “Today banking organisations need solutions that allow them to deliver amazing customer experiences while also improving productivity and organisational agility, and I thought I would take the opportunity here to highlight a few examples,” he said.

Hamblin points towards Lloyds Bank in the UK as one banking organisation that has taken the message of customer centricity to heart. Martin Zalewski, director of Client First at Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking, recently shared that “within Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking, our underpinning vision is to help Britain prosper – and becoming best bank for clients is the key enabler for that. To deliver this, we need to create an enhanced client experience, through becoming a simpler, more efficient and better connected organisation. Microsoft Dynamics CRM helps us deliver that strategy. Microsoft Dynamics CRM enables us to connect the core elements of our Commercial Banking business – our client, product and delivery interfaces. It supports colleagues from across these areas to work better as a joined up team, with the client at the heart of all that we do. Ultimately, the technology is helping us to transform the experience we deliver for our wide range of clients through every interaction.”

Another bank that Hamblin highlights as having enthusiastically embarked on a customer-centric journey is the UK’s Metro Bank. Bruce Rioch, head of technology and IT at the bank, noted that “Microsoft Dynamics has helped us digitise the customer experience in many ways. New customers can now sign tablets to accept banking Terms and Conditions and we use Microsoft Dynamics to automatically generate an email welcome pack, saving thousands of sheets of paper a year. For existing customers, Microsoft Dynamics has enabled us to create a single view of the customer, providing our staff with a holistic customer view, including all their products, inquiries and interaction history. Any new interactions or tasks are easily logged and moved around the business seamlessly ensuring we deliver on our customer promise.”

Bank of Ireland is another great example of a banking organisation using customer data and analytics to improve the customer experience. “Dynamics CRM gives us an understanding of our customer’s behaviours and how our customers are dealing with us,” shared JJ Keys, head of sales capability and CRM, “By capturing customer information and then disseminating it, Dynamics CRM offers Bank of Ireland increased efficiency and increased service. Employees no longer work in a silo; instead information is shared, helping the bank build customer trust and loyalty, while gaining insight into behaviours.”

But Hamblin says that becoming a digital bank is not just about what happens at the point of interaction with customers. “It is also about streamlining processes, gleaning insight and increasing efficiency,” he explains. “And that is exactly what DVB and OLB have been able to do.”

Ingo Zimny, vice president of information technology at Germany-based DVB Bank, said that: “Before Dynamics CRM, decision-relevant information often had to be gathered from different sources. We could not always be sure that we had the latest state of the business in hand. In our business, we have to be very precise in what we do and cannot tolerate mistakes. After implementing Dynamics CRM, transparency in the company has improved significantly. Our employees not only save research time, they can also rely on the timeliness and accuracy of the information found."

Oldenburgische Landesbank, also in Germany, is another such case in point. Thomas Schuder, project lead, said: “At the end of the day, it’s all about having the right data at the right place. And that is exactly why we chose Microsoft Dynamics CRM. With Dynamics CRM, we are able to achieve a true 360 degree customer view and drive powerful context driven sales and service processes. But equally important, it enables business and IT to implement new and changing requirements in a faster manner and that will directly benefit our customers.”

But when you look at CRM solutions, it is not just the out-of-box features that are important but also the ability to move beyond traditional CRM. Along those lines, Hamblin has highlighted a couple of partners who have leveraged the extensible platform of Microsoft Dynamics CRM to build banking specific solutions. Mike Rogers, vice president of Alliances at Hitachi Solutions America, said: “Specifically, in this world of increased regulation, we are very excited about our new Compliance solution built on top of Dynamics CRM that helps banking organisations better track, automate and report on compliance related tasks. This is just one of many banking solutions we are providing to our customers to enable their transformation to digital banking.”

Accenture Avanade is another such example. “As traditional banking organisations work to transform into more efficient, responsive, customer-centric financial services providers, they need new tools and technologies to effectively engage with digital customers and enable digital workers,” said Dave Nelson, Global CRM Lead, Avanade. “Using Dynamics CRM and our established industry best practices, Accenture and Avanade have worked with Microsoft to develop a next generation banking solution. Nearing launch, this solution will offer a rich set of analytics driven personalised Next Best Action support, customer engagement tracking, analytics, all designed to increase loyalty and retention, share-of-wallet, and effectively adapt to changing customer expectations in this highly competitive industry.”

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